


Threads of silver and red

by Sangreal



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Disabled Essek Thelyss, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, The inherent eroticism of Tether Essence, what's sexier than wizards NOTHING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:48:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangreal/pseuds/Sangreal
Summary: Essek takes Caleb's wrist in one hand, and presses a spool against his palm.  “I do not possess the magic to force myself to speak the truth, but I think for a man with your training… this will be the next best thing.”
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 27
Kudos: 356
Collections: ETBC Valentines Smut Exchange





	Threads of silver and red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KmacKatie (kmackatie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmackatie/gifts).



> For a Valentines gift exchange! [Katie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmackatie/pseuds/KmacKatie) requested some Shadowgast Tether Essence goodies, and I had to inject a healthy dosage of ANGST for good measure.
> 
> Canon compliant to 124, assumes Caleb got another eye at the end of 125.  
> I had initially had some Zemnian in here, but decided since it's Caleb's POV I would have everything appear in English since that's what I do for Essek POV Undercommon. 
> 
> Thanks to [LadyOrpheus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOrpheus) and [Chocobogoddes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocobogoddess) for looking over this for me! 
> 
> CW canon typical angst and suicidal ideation (hopeful ending).

_And in the end_

_I will seek you out_

_Amongst the stars._

_The space dust_

_Of me will_

_Whisper_

_"I love you"_

_Into the infinity_

_Of the Universe._

-David Jones

Essek looks as if he has seen a ghost. A painful ghost. He looks to Nein, but not at them. His expression carefully neutral but for the shadows under his eyes and his sunken, wind-burned cheeks leaving him haggard even at rest. “My friends,” he says, “It is good to see you all safe once more. When you did not send word, I-” He puts on a game smile and shakes his head. “Well, I am glad to see you.” There is an unspoken question, the slightest uptick in his tone that makes Caleb’s shoulders sag. The nagging guilt of never having told him about the eyes, compounded by their leaving him high and dry without so much as a godspeed. 

“Essek,” Caleb says, before he loses the nerve, “I need to show you something.” And there must have been something in the tremor of his voice, because Essek looks at him so keenly that he thinks himself stripped naked before him. He looks over Essek’s shoulder, to where Dagen is waving at them. It’s safer than looking at Essek. 

“Alone, if you don’t mind.” Alone is a construct, he is beginning to suspect, with a pair of unblinking eyes burned into him, but the semblance of privacy that his tower provides is necessary, if only to fool his frayed nerves. 

The eyes of Essek’s men are wolves’ eyes as they wait with bated breath for their commander to take action. The only sound in the room the shifting of oiled leather and heavy furs. Caduceus clears his throat.

Essek shakes himself from his stupor with a tight grin, “Yes, yes of course. Ah, Rashka, see that these people are taken care of. Feed them, get them a warm change of clothes. You are in charge until I return.”

\---

There should have been fanfare, Caleb thinks belatedly. Should have been pride. Showing this creation of his to this man he had once called… friend. What he wouldn’t give to go back. Back to before. Back to when he didn’t fear Essek’s touch, or his voice, or his laughter. Back when their interaction was not tainted by their past (foolish, he thinks. It was always tainted. He had just been too blind to see it).

So he gives no tour. He says no words, nothing other than a terse ‘up’, feeling the shadow of Essek’s form lingering at his back, and the wordless sidelong glances around a tower Caleb does not have the will to introduce him to.

He leads Essek, quiet and compliant under a heavy cloak of fur and suspicion, to what might once have been a room just for him. What could have been a gift.

Instead, it is not. It is without personality. A simple room with a simple sofa, and a simple table, in front of a dimly flickering fireplace. He didn’t even bother with the adjacent rooms when conjuring it. It wasn’t necessary.

He turns to Essek when they are sealed away, in a secret room in a secret tower. Essek, who is silent, with a sea of questions roiling in his eyes, but too polite, or perhaps, too fearful to voice them. 

“Essek, there is something else that we didn’t tell you. That _I_ didn’t tell you…” He falters, his tongue stumbling over the words, before forcing it out from between his teeth like he is excising poison. “...I fucked up.”

Essek’s gaze turns wary, more wary than it already was. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know,” Caleb says, and his voice cracks. A painful break in the veneer of stoicism standing as a bulwark against his ruin. He cannot afford weakness. This is not his friend. This is barely his ally.

This is the Kryn Shadowhand, loyal to him only under suspicion of treason and threat of assassination, and an impending doom that he wants no part of, but is unable to flee.

Essek’s eyes reflect the flames in the hearth, turning them the color of the sea on fire.

“I need to show you something. Something I do not fully understand.”

Still Essek does not speak, his expression stony and unreadable.

As he reaches for the hem of his shirt, Caleb can’t help but think of a hot tub. Of being bare before a nervous young man with his trousers rolled up to his knees. Of why he was nervous. Of what he was hiding.

Essek balks, for the first time since arriving in Caleb’s tower there is a flash of emotion. His brows pulled tight and his mouth half open on an unspoken question. _What are you doing?_

Caleb sighs. “This- there are marks. It will be easier to show you this way.”

“Oh,” Essek says, voice tight and tinny in the back of his throat. He takes a cautious step backwards and clasps his hands behind his back, his chin set at a defiant angle. He is, once more, the picture of sterile, academic interest. 

Caleb pulls his shirt over his head and turns to bare the eyes, glancing over his shoulder to gauge Essek’s reaction.

Essek’s eyes fall first to the scars on his forearms, but flicker away, as if guilty to have been caught staring. They then fall on the shoulder Caleb bares for him. He cocks his head to the side such that his earrings sparkle in the firelight. “You… got a tattoo?”

“No, it is a mark.” Caleb hesitates, “A curse.”

“What happened?”

“I made a mistake.” Caleb smiles, well practiced in the art of self depreciation. “The Somnovum. We explained this to you, yes?”

Essek nods uncertainly.

Caleb looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers. “I let it… I left a door open when I should have closed it.” He shakes his head, “No, I should not have opened it in the first place. But I did. And now it has its claws in me.”

“What is it? Caleb, what is it doing to you?” Caleb doesn't like how concerned Essek sounds, the way he leans forward as if desperate to reach out for him. As if his hands clutched behind his back serves to still them from wandering where they shouldn't.

Shaking his head, Caleb squeezes his eyes closed against a sudden, unexpected burning. “I don’t know. It fills my thoughts. My dreams. It marks my skin. The eyes cannot be removed by any means we possess. Lucien’s terrible powers are granted by this entity, I don’t know at what cost.”

“Well,” Essek says softly, his eyes not leaving the mark, “I suppose you took my comment to heart. Nothing you do is safe.”

Something painful twists in Caleb’s chest at the heartbreaking gentleness in Essek’s voice. He flinches, eyes downcast as Essek reaches out to touch the mark. He looks up at Caleb with unguarded fear in his eyes.

It’s the first time they’ve really looked at each other since the Balleater. Since either ones’ gaze has not skittered off out of fear or shame or resentment. 

Slow as molasses, Essek brings up his other arm to grasp at both of Caleb’s biceps. He looks up in stony silence, waiting for permission.

Caleb nods.

Essek wraps his arms around Caleb and squeezes with all his might. It should not feel so relieving to accept this affection. Essek's slight frame swaddled in wool that scratches at his chest and chafes his heart. It is a farce, but it is _something_ . And it has been so long since he has had _something_ . He thinks of the others. Of how they have that _something_ . Maybe he doesn’t deserve reality. Maybe this playing pretend is his lot in life, but it feels _so good_. He shudders on a sigh, struggling not to go limp in Essek’s arms. In the way Essek presses his cheek against Caleb’s sternum.

Essek pulls away too soon, and not soon enough. He peers up at Caleb, “Do you trust me?” He asks. 

Caleb says nothing for the longest time. They both know the answer, and that answer is not yes. Disappointment clouds Essek’s features, but not surprise. “I’d like to show you something, if you’re willing. It will not harm you. I know my word means little, but I swear it.”

“What sort of something?”

Nerves, or something akin to them has Essek nursing his lower lip between his teeth. He is quiet, for a long while. Long enough that Caleb begins to wonder whether he is regretting offering whatever it is that he hasn’t said. 

“A... gift… if you’ll accept it.”

“A gift for what?”

Essek stares at him, the dark circles under his eyes are even darker in the dim light. He scratches the back of his neck with a resigned sigh. “Nothing. It was a foolish idea.”

“Essek, please. I know things… I know they are not great right now. There are wolves at our door and snapping at our heels, and there is worse yet to come. Worse from which we might not return. If… you have something that can help, this is the time to do it.”

Essek chuckles, and after an aborted, skittish half attempt to reach for Caleb’s face, works up the nerve to brush a lock of hair behind Caleb’s ear. “I would raze the dead city to the ground before I see your death at that man’s hand,” he says with steely resolve. With the confidence of a man ready to take up arms. To fight. 

Caleb smiles down at him, a politician’s smile. A spy’s smile. They both know that Essek alone is not enough to stop this thing that Caleb’s hubris has pushed him into. “I could say the same, Shadowhand.”

Essek stills. “Is that all that I am now, then?”

“It is safest to hide behind a mask, you know this.”

Silence.

Essek pulls away, fidgeting and running his fingers through his hair. “Please. I want to show you something, and if you decide you don’t want it, we need never speak of it again.”

Hating how suspicious he is, and yet suspicious all the same, Caleb frowns. “Alright. Fine,” he says, his hand reaching for his component pouch. 

Essek’s eyes flicker in the dim light, and his gaze falls to Caleb’s hand. They share a moment of unspoken understanding. Essek frowns too. 

“Can I cast some light?”

“I would rather you didn’t, but I will not stop you.”

Caleb opens the snap of his pouch, and Essek stiffens across from him, as if bracing for a rebuff. Or an attack. Chastened, Caleb’s hand falls back to his side, and he wordlessly nods. 

Essek pulls forth something that catches bright in the dim red light. There is a sharp twang and scrape of metal, and suddenly there is something cold and biting against Caleb’s wrist. Caleb flinches away. 

“It’s alright,” Essek murmurs, “It’s just a thread. Feel it.” Essek takes his wrist in one hand, and presses a spool against his palm. Caleb rubs his thumb over it, and cannot fathom its purpose, but opens his palm back up in offering. “I do not possess the magic to force myself to speak the truth, but I think for a man with your training… this will be the next best thing.”

Essek takes the thread once more, and gently winds it around Caleb’s wrist. Then there is a slight tug, and the sound of more spooling metal, and Essek’s breathing in the dim light. 

Essek begins to speak, but the words are foreign to Caleb save for the insight to identify them as Undercommon. They are said in a cautious hush, earnest and pained. The same broken voice that was ripped from him in the bowels of a ship in Nicodranas. The same broken voice that spoke of shame, of _regret_ in his quarters not a week ago. 

The thread around his hand glows, and like a ribbon of lightning, twines him with Essek. Until it doesn’t. Until it sinks into their skin like mercury and both of their wrists remain faintly glowing, as if fire runs in their veins. Or residuum. And then nothing. 

He waits for something to happen, but nothing does, save for an upwelling of anxiety and the quickening of his heart as he worries over what comes next. 

“Tell me to stop and I will,” Essek says softly, even as he pulls away. The ghost of fingers caress Caleb’s cheek, and he startles at the sensation. Then there is the firmer press of a palm that does not exist. Fingers gently roll the lobe of his ear between a thumb and forefinger. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, breathless and undeniably curious. His curiosity always was his downfall. 

“Magic,” Essek says, and there are fingers over his heart, pressing against his chest.  
  
“Essek-” he says, unmoored and confused and unsure what else to say.

The pressure on his chest releases in an instant, and instead there is the very hesitant brush of two finger pads against his lower lip. Like static in a storm, he can feel breath that isn’t his ghosting over fingers that aren’t there. 

He reaches up to touch his lips, to confirm what his senses already know, that there is nothing there. When his fingers make contact, there is a soft huff of an exhale from Essek, and Caleb freezes.

“I can feel you,” he says.

“Yes,” Essek replies, “ _Caleb_.”

And he can feel that too. Feel the twist in his chest that is not his own discomfort. It is a gnawing insecurity born of something unfathomable to him. A heartache that tangles with his own, digging in its claws and shredding the delicate walls he so carefully constructed in Essek’s wake. 

“I need you to understand something, Caleb.”

Essek’s heart weighs heavy in Caleb’s chest and he has never felt so overwhelmed. Has not felt more exposed as he is in this moment with the fears and the grief of two men weighing him down as one.

“I will _not_ let this thing take you, Caleb. I cannot. I need… I need you to understand that when I say this, I _mean_ it. I understand that I have squandered any chance I may have had at earning your trust. I do not seek forgiveness, but _Caleb.”_

He feels his name in his bones, a syrupy ache that weighs his limbs heavy and his lungs tight.

“Caleb, I will fight for you. I will _die_ for you. I have done nothing to earn your loyalty, but you... You have done everything to earn mine. And you will _have_ it. You need only ask for it.”

A pregnant pause stretches between them. The fire makes no sound. In his haste, Caleb had forgotten to enchant it, and so they are enveloped in a softly glowing void.

“You need only ask,” Essek says again, softer, his eyes downcast. _He couldn’t meet his eyes_.

Caleb flinches when he feels a hand rubbing his arm, until he realizes that it’s Essek rubbing his own forearm with a pensive, wounded expression on his face. 

“I trusted you,” Caleb says.

“I know.” Essek does not look up, the set of his shoulders as brittle as his voice as he hunches in on himself. He is so small without his cloak. Deceptively unassuming. Caleb knows he is razor sharp. He’s cut himself on Essek’s blade before.

“You broke that trust.”

The pain in his chest leaves him breathless.  
  
“ _I know_.” Essek’s voice cracks.

Caleb is silent for a long while as he considers Essek's words. The phantom pain in his chest. What he wouldn't give to go back, back when asking Essek for things didn't feel like selling his soul. Though, he supposes, he had proven himself willing to do even that in the face of the Nonagon. He tells himself that was different, but knows it's a lie to protect his heart from the alternative. “...I think I need your help, Essek.”

Essek nods once, a sharp bob of his chin. Then again, the slightest nod, repeated four times, with his ears pinned tightly to the sides of his head. “You shall have it. Always.”

They do not move, then. Even though there is no reason for them to linger in this place.

The fireplace makes no sound.

Caleb isn’t wearing a shirt.

Caleb can’t tell if he is hearing Essek breathe, or feeling it in his own chest. He rubs his sternum, and Essek exhales, and Caleb hears it as clearly as he feels the tingle run down the back of his neck. Of Essek’s neck.

“Es-” he starts at the same moment Essek says, “Cale-”

“Oh.”

The both laugh, a shared, soft, abashed huff.

“Yes?” 

Essek shakes his head in earnest, “No, please. You go first.”

“Oh, I was just going to ask…” Caleb’s mind goes blank. What _was_ he going to ask? “Ah… How long does this spell last?

“An hour,” Essek says, then adds, “Probably fifty minutes now.”

Without thinking, Caleb says, “Fifty four minutes and…” he waits, “Thirty seconds.”

Essek smiles at him, and sunlight blooms in Caleb’s chest, and he can’t tell to whom the soft, warm sensation belongs. “Of course. I can dispel it before then, if you’d prefer. I just…” He trails off, biting his lip.   
  
Caleb feels him biting his lip and he has to clench his fists rather than make a sound. Essek’s gaze shutters, carefully painting itself into something presentable, something made out of diamond, not glass, and yet there is so much reflecting in his eyes.

Something painful twists in Caleb’s chest. In Essek’s chest.

“I just wanted you to know I wasn’t lying to you.”

“No,” Caleb says, knowing full well it’s not really an answer, “No, don’t dispel it.”

He looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers and watches the tendons shift beneath his skin. He can feel the weight of Essek’s gaze on him as he gently presses the fingers of his left hand against the wrist of his right, and it has nothing to do with the spell. Essek inhales carefully through his nose. Caleb brushes his fingers over the scarred skin of his forearm and that perfectly poised breath falters.

“What were you going to say?” Caleb asks, rubbing his thumb over the meat of his own hand.   
  
“It’s... “ Essek is staring at Caleb’s hands, and there’s a heat rising up the back of Caleb’s neck that he knows for certain does not belong to Essek.

Essek clears his throat and looks away. “Nothing.”

“Please, Essek.”

He feels the way Essek’s name affects him. Feels it in his bones. In the flip of his stomach. In the heat pooling between his legs. Essek chokes on a sigh.

“We have each made mistakes, Essek,” (Another shiver of his spine, of Essek’s spine). “And we are both paying for it.” Essek’s gaze skitters brazenly over his bare chest before settling on the red mark sullying his arm. “I don’t want to make another bad decision today.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I’m sorry.” His diplomatic mein is betrayed by the ice that freezes in his veins, bitter as hoarfrost, so cold that Caleb can feel it in his own heart as he watches Essek collect himself, and turn from him as if in a dream. And Essek is careful, so careful, not to move his restless hands.

“Wait-” Caleb says, “That isn’t what I meant.”

Essek turns to him once more, his shoulders hunched and slight and his arms wrapped tightly around his torso. “What did you mean then?”

“I… I want-”

Something flutters in his chest, painful and hopeful and on gossamer wings that do not belong to him.

“What do you want Caleb?” Essek whispers so softly that Caleb almost misses it, that if he wants to deny having heard it, Essek would let him, “Ask me.”

It takes Caleb long moments to work up the nerve to speak. Essek’s fingers tap anxiously against his arm, distracting Caleb, grounding him.

He shudders over the pain of breathing, hunching in on himself in a mirror of Essek’s discomfort. “I want to go back to the way things were,” he says, his voice strained under the weight of his words, “Except, I don’t know if that ever really existed.”

“Caleb. _Caleb_.” Essek closes the space between them with one small step, and then another, his eyes darting back and forth across Caleb’s features, searching for what, Caleb can't imagine. He lifts his hands as slow as if he was handling a skittish colt, and they hover just to either side of Caleb’s jaw. There, wordlessly, he waits.

He should say no. He should say no.

He should say no.

“Yes.”

Essek’s cool fingers settle on his cheeks, creating an almost overwhelming feedback loop of sensation. Of his heart pounding in his chest, and _Essek’s_ heart pounding in his chest, and the cool, smooth brush of Essek’s thumbs over his cheeks, and the rough, warm scrape of facial hair against Essek’s thumbs, and Caleb can’t help but choking on a broken sob at the intimacy of the gesture. 

Essek urges him downwards, and he does not resist. A pair of soft lips press against his forehead, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Caleb. Look at me.”

He reluctantly meets Essek’s earnest gaze.

“I know I failed you, Caleb. But _feel me_ .” His fingers press more insistently into Caleb’s cheeks. “Feel me when I tell you it was _real_ . I _swear_ it. What I felt-” Essek tears his gaze away, over to the silent fire, the beige sofa, the empty table. His hands remain anchored on Caleb’s face, his skin gradually warming against Caleb’s own, burning skin. He licks his lips and his heart hammers in Caleb’s chest. He takes one deep, bracing breath. “What I _feel_ for you, it is not a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the _truth_.”

“Essek-”

“ _Caleb_.”

His name catches in his ribs and tears his veins, twists itself around his spine like a snake with its fangs sunk deep into sinew and bone, poisoning him with fire and-  
  
“We need never speak of this again. I told you that, and I stand by it. I have cared for you deeply for a long while. It was my pleasure to be your teacher. It was my… It was my honor to call myself your friend. And even if I squandered that, do not doubt for a moment that the connection that we have is genuine,” A pause, hesitation, guilt, “For me, anyway.”

“It was for me as well,” Caleb says, his throat tight and his words pained.

“But… no longer,” Essek says more than asks.

“I don’t…” His voice cracks and he grimaces, rubbing his face. “Essek, now is not really a good time.”

“Do you want me to leave then?” Essek asks. His hands are still on Caleb’s face, finally thawed from the freezing cold.

“No…”

“What do you want?”

Nothing he should have. Nothing he deserves.

“Caleb,” Essek says, breaking him from his revere with thumbs gently rubbing his cheeks, and he is so close. And they have lingered here long enough for the chill to have seeped from his bones, and Caleb is without his shirt, and at this point Caleb doesn’t know what propriety is. “I won’t let him take you from me.”

“ _From_ you?” Caleb asks, aiming for teasing. It sounds petulant and suspicious even to his own ears. Even without the subtle stab of disappointment rippling through Essek’s magic.

“If you’ll have me,” Essek says, undeterred. “If not, I’ll go. I will do everything in my power to aid you and your friends, but I won’t bother you again if you don’t want it.”

Caleb wraps his fingers around Essek’s and gently pries them from his face. He can’t think with them burning a brand into his skin. “Essek, we are heading into a battle with something… something I do not understand. Something evil. We could all be dead by this time tomorrow. I don’t think now is the right time to be talking about relationships.”

“Then don’t. Don’t talk.”

“Essek…"

Essek stares up at him, silently pleading. And there are fathoms there, tired, aching, lonely fathoms that have spent long months, long years alone and fearful and desperate for a peer. _Whom he betrayed_.

Caleb sighs and brushes his nose across Essek’s forehead, “We should really talk about this…”

“And we can,” Essek says, tipping his head up so that their noses bump against one another and his chin tickles Caleb’s beard, and Caleb’s beard tickles Essek’s chin. “We can talk until we’re hoarse once we’ve saved the world.”

It’s bluster. Even without magic Caleb can hear the uncertainty behind Essek’s words. Fear of failure, fear of Lucien, fear of the assassins and the truth dogging his every labored step, and it hurts. The truth hurts so much, but… There is something spicy and herbal on Essek’s breath that makes Caleb yearn to touch. To taste. To take. To pretend like everything is alright, like he belongs here, if only for a moment.

Essek is mouthing words against his skin, and he has no idea what he’s saying. But he kisses him anyway. Kisses him like he’s starving. Like he’s dying.

He probably is.

Caleb tangles his fingers with Essek's and squeezes, until he breaks apart for a breath of air and he can’t stop from pulling his hands free, from running them over the cropped hair at the nape of Essek’s neck, and drawing their bodies back together. 

He can feel his beard against Essek’s skin, scraping raw and rough. His wind chapped lips catching and snagging on the smooth, soft lips beneath his own, and the heavy, rough wool of Essek’s jacket pressed in a long line against his bare chest.

Someone gasps, and he doesn’t know which of them it is. Stars burst behind his eyes and in his chest and his gut, and he has never felt anything like what he feels when their mouths are slotted together. So he does it again. Chasing the chaotic, overwhelming sensation of Essek’s relief, and Essek’s want, and Essek’s...

He tries to push the word love out of his mind, but once it’s there, it takes root, hungry and desperate, and consumes his mind like fire, suddenly exposed to the air and spreading beyond his control.

“Essek,” he says, he sighs.

Essek pulls away, staring up at Caleb with dark eyes blown wide. A lock of white hair turned pale orange in the firelight has fallen across his face, and Caleb completely forgets what he was going to say, fingers drawn inexorably to that one, rogue strand, to brushing it off of Essek’s forehead.

Essek leans into his hand, eyes fluttering closed and pale lashes stark against his cheeks, and Caleb wonders what it would feel like to kiss those closed eyes. So he does.

Warmth explodes in his chest. Warmth and fondness, and a sort of wistfulness that Caleb would never have dared associate with the Shadowhand. A wistfulness that is only Essek, who is charmed by hot tubs, and cat paws, and pink parasols.

When he pulls back, Essek is smiling, his eyes softly lidded and his lip caught under the tine of a blunted fang. He looks younger. He looks exhausted.

Essek opens his eyes, and Caleb’s stomach does a pleasant swoop. Essek chuckles, glancing down and pressing his fingers against his own belly. Against the heavy wool and gods know whatever else separates skin from skin. “How long do we have?”

Caleb’s mind goes blank save to a static panic at the thought of having to explain Essek’s lingering presence to his friends. “The rest of the Nein will be expecting m- _us_ for dinner, but it is early yet.”

Essek leans up to meet Caleb’s hunched form, and brushes their noses together once more. “I meant with the spell. How much longer can you feel what you do to me?”

Caleb swallows hard, closing the last minute distance between them to brush his lips over Essek’s as he speaks. “Forty-three minutes.”

Essek nods, and leans up to kiss him once more, and when the tip of his tongue traces over Caleb’s lips, they part without protest.

They lost some of that time, Caleb thinks, in the exchange of kisses and sighs, and hands on Caleb’s bare chest, and on the scratchy wool draped over Essek’s shoulders. In Essek’s fingers working their way over his skin, manicured nails pinching at his nipples and making him shudder. In Caleb fumbling for clasps and buttons, and the heavy shuffle of Essek’s jacket falling clumsily off one arm, and then the other. 

Caleb pulls away, grunting in frustration when his blind groping identifies at least three more layers of clothing under Essek's jacket. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?”

Essek scoffs, his chest fluttering under Caleb’s hands. “It’s a little cold outside, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Caleb swears, taking a step far enough back to properly look down at the maze of clasps and straps cinching Essek into his thick winter clothes. He gets three buckles undone on his vest before Essek latches onto his neck, and he whimpers, feeling a flutter of heat between his legs from Essek at the sound. Essek sucks harder, insistent and demanding, the scrape of teeth against his skin has Caleb shuddering, abandoning his efforts to disrobe Essek to instead grip onto his arms to steady himself. 

“Caleb,” Essek says, nipping at the bruise he’s left on Caleb’s neck. “I want you to feel yourself inside me.”

Caleb keens, his hands tightening around Essek’s arms and Essek sinks his teeth back into his neck and Caleb can’t even tell whose want he feels because he feels _so much_ . “I can’t- _Shit._ Essek, I can’t. I can’t really do that with all these clothes on,” Caleb mutters in his frustration. 

“Do you want help?” Essek asks, his words punctuated by breathless laughter. 

Caleb gently (reluctantly) pries him off of his neck and holds him at arm's length. “I would like you to stand still please. I can’t think.”

Essek goes rigid in his hands, his back straight and his shoulders squared. “As you wish,” he says, and waits, watching Caleb only out of the corner of his eye. And the unspoken rift is back between them, the chasm of disappointment and mistrust and abject failure. Caleb sighs, chasing after him, peppering wordless apologies to his mouth, his jaw, his neck. 

“Stay still so I can get you out of these,” he says when his lips manage to thaw the ice that has hooked itself in his chest, and Essek’s shoulders have relaxed once more.

Under his jacket, Essek does not have the three layers Caleb had initially thought, but four. As he peels away his vest, and his sweater, and what he had assumed was a final underlayer, he exposes a fourth, softly shimmering turtleneck that clings so tightly to his skin that Caleb can see the flex and heave of his soft stomach and the peaking of his nipples when all the bulk of his warmth is stripped away. Essek’s hair is ruined after so much pulling and tugging of clothes, but Caleb thinks he prefers it this way.

“You’re not done yet,” Essek says with a minute shiver.

Caleb runs his fingers over Essek’s ribs, surprised when it feels like there is no fabric there at all. Essek huffs, flinching and shying from Caleb’s touch because it _tickles_ , and sympathetic tickling is an experience so foreign to Caleb that he can’t help but chuckle too.

Essek reaches down for the shimmery hem of his shirt, but Caleb stills his hand. “No, wait. Keep it for now, it’s beautiful.” Holding Essek’s gaze, he drops slowly to his knees, dragging his fingers down Essek’s sides, over Essek’s hips.

Essek hisses something sharp and aborted in Undercommon that Caleb does not understand, but understands perfectly well all the same.

He undoes Essek’s belt, staring up into Essek’s wrapt, bleary eyes as he works, as he purposefully squeezes the meat of Essek’s ass, working his belt free of its loops. He slides Essek’s heavy trousers down his hips and barks out a surprised laugh when he realizes that Essek is not wearing smallclothes, but an entire other set of leggings underneath.

Essek scoffs, gently flicking a finger against Caleb’s forehead. “It’s _cold_.”

“Yes,” Caleb murmurs, burying his nose in the soft fabric covering Essek’s groin. “It is.”

A flicker of heat and impatience simmers between them, Essek strung tight and struggling to remain still with the pressure of Caleb’s nose rubbing against him. Caleb seeing, smelling, almost, _almost_ tasting the intimate parts of Essek that he is so desperate to have tended. Caleb looks up to him, and exhales a hot, openmouthed sigh against Essek’s half hard cock.

“As much as I love being _teased_ ,” Essek mutters through clenched teeth, “We are on something of a time crunch.”

“ _I want to taste you._ ” Caleb says in Zemnian, feeling suddenly, impulsively contrary as he mouths at Essek through his pants, feeling the searing, electric shock of arousal down Essek’s spine and his own spine and all the spaces their bodies touch. 

“ _Caleb,_ ” Essek says, “ _Please_.”

With one last, lingering kiss, Caleb obliges him, sitting back onto his heels.

He gently eases Essek’s boots from his feet, and then his trousers, and then his leggings. And then, on impulse, presses a kiss to the inside of Essek’s bony knee, leaving him standing bare in nothing but his shimmery undershirt, shivering even in the warmth of the tower. Looking small, and suddenly awkward, Essek draws his arms over his chest and glances pointedly at Caleb’s own trousers.

Caleb thinks briefly to play coy. To obfuscate. To push. They don’t have time for that. The two of them don’t have time for so much.

It’s just as well.

“Caleb?” Essek asks, and it’s small and hesitant. Like him. “We don’t have to, if you don’t…” He looks away, towards the heap of his clothes on the floor.

“No,” Caleb says, “No, that wasn’t… that wasn’t it.” He palms the side of Essek’s face and rubs his thumb over his cheek when the heavy weight of Essek’s affection leans into his hand. “I want to,” he says, kissing him.

“May I undress you?” Essek asks the small space between their lips.

Caleb nods, lingering near as Essek’s hands rake down through his chest hair and his fingers twist in the loops of his belt. It is unfair, his gracefulness, managing to undo Caleb’s belt and the flies of his trousers all the while stealing featherlight kisses, never once faltering. Essek slides his fingers under the hem of Caleb’s trousers and squeezes his ass. Caleb smiles against his mouth at the sound of fabric sliding half ways down his thighs.

Essek kneels before him and there is a sudden, unexpected stab of pain in his knees. He is about to question whether the spell is malfunctioning, but Essek’s hand cups him through his smallclothes and they both sigh. His fingers do not linger, not in any way that might be remotely satisfying, gently prying Caleb free of his clothes and sliding them down his legs until he can do so no more, at which point he dedicates his attention to the many buckles on Caleb’s boots.

In a mirror gesture that makes Caleb’s heart twist in his chest, Essek places the tenderest of kisses against the inside of his thigh as he leans in to pry his feet free of his boots, and Caleb’s knees _hurt_.

“Help me up,” Essek says, when he has carefully folded Caleb’s clothes and placed his boots next to them in precise, neat piles. Caleb offers him his hand and hoists, taken aback by how little Essek weighs. There is another flash of pain, shooting through his hips all the way to his toes and his discomfort must show on his feet, because Essek offers him a mournful, knowing smile. “Life is cruel,” he says, and wraps his arms around Caleb once more now that their bodies are bared, squeezing hard with his forehead pressed against Caleb’s sternum. Caleb rubs a hand between his shoulder blades, unable to offer any comfort from a reality that has shown neither of them any quarter other than to acknowledge that Essek isn’t… That he isn’t alone.

“You, um… you don’t have oil, do you?” Caleb asks, realizing any supplies he has would necessitate going to his own quarters, a place he has no desire to show Essek. 

Essek nods, and pulls away far enough to cut a line through the air with his fingers and pluck a vial from the aether.

Caleb raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Essek mutters with a flare of indignant defensiveness, “It’s for personal use.”

Caleb laughs deprecatingly, looking down at his own hands. “Yes, of course.”

“Caleb?” Essek says, and every time his name graces those lips, something twists in his chest, and he doesn’t know if it’s Essek’s or his pain. Essek pushes the vial into his hands, silently pleading.

There is no good place for them here. Which is fitting enough. There is no good place for them anywhere. But they shuffle to the sofa, and Essek slumps onto it, shrugging first out of his shimmery turtleneck, and then resting his head against the arm, staring up at Caleb with adoration that borders far too closely to that same _love_ that Caleb is so carefully tiptoeing around, lest its sharp, broken edges cut his feet. He kneels between Essek’s legs, and presses a kiss to his chest, and then another, and then gently closes his teeth over a nipple. Essek whines, canting his hips, and clumsily wrapping a leg around Caleb’s arm. “ _Please_.”

Caleb allows himself to be jostled, settling back into a sitting position with Essek bared before him, and a chilly glass vial in his hands. Essek watches him waffle, his slender fingers drawing lazy circles around one of his nipples, still glistening from Caleb’s mouth. Caleb can feel it as if those fingers were on his own chest.

He holds the vial cupped in his palms and brings it to his mouth, breathing on the chilly glass until it warms to his touch. Essek sighs beneath him as he waits, artlessly stroking himself, and Caleb tries to drown out the sensation by squeezing closed his eyes, but it only makes the thick haze of arousal and stimulation all the more distracting.

“Would you rather it be cold?” Caleb asks through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No,” Caleb says, “You _felt it_.”

The corner of Essek’s mouth quirks upward into the ghost of a wry grin, a grin from before. When things were simpler. “I could teach you this spell, if you want?”

Caleb shakes his head, grinning tiredly as he pours the now warm oil over his hand. “What would that cost me?” He asks, only half joking.

It is the wrong thing to say. The smile falls from Essek’s face, and the heat is stolen from the room, replaced instead by a pensive frown that carves a deep rift between his brows. “Nothing,” he whispers, and it rings louder than if he had shouted. “I owe you more than I could possibly repay.”

“I don’t want your favors, Essek. I want you to live.”

Essek squeezes his eyes closed, and Caleb’s chest clenches painfully, so painfully he presses a hand to it, only to realize the pain does not belong to him. He hesitantly presses his other hand over Essek’s heart, and Essek lets out a ragged breath. “Please just fuck me.”

Fuck sounds so ugly, he thinks. So impersonal. He knows it’s for his own benefit. Can tell in the way Essek’s teeth catch on his lower lip and his brow furrows into a deep scowl, as if the word itself causes Essek pain.

It’s all they have time for. It’s all they can afford, between them. Caleb would shatter if they call it what it really is.

Caleb wants to kiss Essek. But he feels too raw. Too exposed. So instead he traces his fingers down Essek’s narrow chest, his soft stomach, leaving a trail of glistening oil and shivering skin in his wake.

Essek is silent beneath him, until he isn’t. Until his eyes shoot open and he stares up at the ceiling with a soft gasp. Until Caleb wraps slick fingers around him and gently strokes. Until he’s reduced to a soft, reverent chant of, _“Please, please, please._ ” His hips ache, but he spreads them wider for Caleb anyway.

“Essek,” Caleb says, reaching between his legs. Gently pressing, but not breaching. “Do we need to move?”

Essek shakes his head. “Not unless you have some extra pillows lying around that I don’t see.”

Caleb smiles, and apologetically mirrors Essek’s gesture. “I’m sorry. You… This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What was?” Essek asks, cautiously curious.

 _“I…”_ He falters, unsure of how to explain without ruining everything. _“I… it takes me a long time to warm up to someone, Essek. But when I do, I fall hard. You make me feel so much, and I don't know what to do,"_ he says, as if that could possibly suffice as explanation to a man who does not speak Zemnian. As if his wretched pain could possibly be put to words and not necrotize everything it touches. 

“It’s alright,” Essek whispers, uncomprehending, but painfully understanding, “I don’t want anything more than what you would freely give.”

Caleb hides behind a waterfall of bangs as he looks down to his hand, poised to breach Essek’s body, but waiting for _something_ that feels like permission. Permission to be what he is. Permission not to have to hide behind a mask of apathy.

“I want this,” he says, and presses _in_.

Caleb is left needing to close his eyes, overwhelmed by a duality of sensory information, narrowed down to the feeling of his finger in Essek’s body. Where he can feel each flinch, each twist, each subtle shift, the tension and the need coiling tight in Essek’s gut as he tries to adjust around him, tries to get him to touch him where he needs, and when he does-

They both cry out. Caleb stills, muscles trembling, blinking away the spots in his eyes.

He doesn’t do it again. Not when he introduces a second finger, nor a third. He stubbornly refuses, no matter how much Essek wriggles, no matter what soft, frustrated grumbles are choked from his throat. He does not press his fingers against Essek’s prostate again. Because if he does, he will be _gone_. And if Essek’s restless squirms, and blunt nails digging hard crescent shapes into his shoulders, are anything to go by, he suspects Essek would be too. 

“Come on,” Essek says, impatience turning his voice ragged as he forces himself down onto Caleb’s fingers. “Fuck me, _please_. I want to feel you. I want you to feel what I feel.”

Caleb is struck once more by an uncomfortable intimacy that leaves him heartsick and floundering, staring down at the vial in his free hand as if it is a weapon of their mutually assured destruction.

He banishes the thought.

There is no sultry way to slick himself up, Caleb thinks with a flare of self consciousness. But Essek stares at him with doe eyes, hooded and dark under long white lashes, and it bolsters his waning confidence. Essek bites his lip, watching the obscene motion of Caleb’s hand, and cants his legs wider, awkwardly propping one heel against the backrest of the couch, and the other falling to the floor, baring himself for Caleb. The oil between his legs glistens and catches in the firelight and pain burns in Caleb’s hips.

“Are you alright?” Caleb asks, realizing too late the absurdity of asking such a question with an oily hand wrapped around his dick. 

Essek nods with a grim smile. “It is something I must live with. But if it is bothersome, I can cancel the spell.”

“No, please. If you must feel it, then I would feel it too.”

Essek’s expression softens, and his lips part as if he is about to say something. Something _dangerous_. Caleb interrupts him in a rushed panic of movement, teasing his fingers between Essek’s legs. Essek sighs, and nods in understanding, in silent permission.

Essek’s heart is beating jackrabbit fast in Caleb’s chest, and Essek is so light in his arms as he tilts Essek's hips to align their bodies. Caleb _gently, gently, gently_ eases forward, hyper aware and leery of Essek’s pain.

The same pain which explodes in Caleb’s core and Caleb’s hips when Essek wraps his legs around Caleb’s waist and tugs, which is followed by a flash of heat that leaves him blind and breathless. Unbalanced, Caleb fumbles forward, his hips sliding roughly against Essek’s ass. “Don’t coddle me,” Essek says in a ragged, fierce warning. 

Caleb whimpers, forehead falling to Essek’s chest. Essek grabs his hair and gently tugs, and he can feel the pads of Essek’s fingers and the scrape of his nails as much as he feels the tangle of his own hair against Essek’s fingers, and the clench of Essek’s body around him and the raw stretch of himself filling Essek, and it’s too much, and it’s not enough. His voice comes out a strained keen, “ _Wait. Wait.”_

Essek stills, his fingers loosening in Caleb’s hair. His chest heaves in shattered breaths under Caleb’s forehead and the heat between them is searing. “I’m sorry,” Caleb murmurs, “It’s. It’s just a lot.”

Essek chuckles, breathless and overwrought, “Yes. Yes it is.”

Caleb swallows hard, pressing his lips against Essek’s neck, and then wincing at the flinch of sympathetic ticklishness when Essek’s squirms underneath him with a breathless sigh. 

“Caleb. I don’t-ah!” Essek’s voice breaks into something pitched and tight, halfway between a gasp and a giggle when Caleb buries his nose into his hair, kissing the soft skin just below his ear. “We need to keep moving, Caleb.”

His first, irrational instinct, is that Essek is warning him of their impending doom, and a dark gloom settles over his shoulders, a chill as cold as the frigid winds they had sought to escape.

A sharp tug of his hair leaves them both gasping. “Don’t,” Essek says with a hazy edge to his voice, pulling Caleb’s head up to catch his eye. “I mean the spell. Feel me. _Fuck me_. He clenches around Caleb as punctuation of his demand and Caleb whimpers in his grasp. 

“Okay,” Caleb says, with a hesitant shift of his hips, and then another, and then another. He hisses through clenched teeth, squeezing his eyes fast shut against too much, too bright, too close. All that Essek feels, all the pain and the pleasure, and the hollowness, and the fullness. Hot and together and-

“Caleb,” Essek says, “Please. Look at me.”

He tears his eyes open and forces himself to hold Essek’s gaze. Snowy, heavily hooded lashes half obscure his eyes, and something twists in Caleb’s gut when the corner of Essek’s mouth curls upwards in a soft smile. “Be with me,” Essek says, “Just for now. That will come soon enough.”

Caleb nods, and moves his hips.

And the world falls away from around him. Around them. Every small shift in his body he feels in Essek’s body tenfold. He feels stretched, and full, like a great, cavernous void inside him is being sated for the first time with fire, and need, and _home_. And he feels Essek clench around him, and dig his nails into his back, holding him, grounding him. The beating of his heart in his chest, and Essek’s heart beside it, and he lets out a ragged sob. Too raw. Too exposed. Too intimate.

Essek wraps his fingers in Caleb’s hair and pulls again, tipping Caleb’s head and it is only then that he realizes he let his gaze fall downward. “Look at me,” Essek demands with shattered voice and bared fang. 

“Why?” Caleb asks, and his voice is broken too. He does not like what he feels. He does not like this thing that feels too close to love. Too close to something that he does not deserve. 

He does not deserve.

Essek’s brow furrows, as much in concentration as concern. “Because,” he whispers, as if speaking any louder might fray Caleb’s fragile edges, “I don’t know how else to tell you this. And you need to know. If we- If I don’t-.” He squeezes closed his eyes just long enough to blink away a suspicious shine catching the light of the fire. “I needed to tell you.” 

It sounds like goodbye.

“Essek-”  
  
“No, please. Just do this for me. You do not need to say anything. You do not need to respond.” His hand slides to Caleb’s cheek, and his gaze softens. “I don’t blame you.”

“ _Essek_ .”  
  
“What?” Essek asks, and Caleb sees himself in his hesitation. Sees himself in the way he hides behind obfuscation and explanation. In the way he doesn’t quite let the dynamic shift in such a way that might bare his wounds to the cold world.

He doesn’t know what to say. His mind is a mess, and his heart a warren of clumsy words and false promises, and ugly, acerbic betrayal.

Instead, he kisses Essek. He kisses him. He holds Essek’s jaw in his hand, and behind his neck, and he kisses like a man starved. Like a man who has gone years without care, without touch, without affection. Without the press of lips, and the slide of hips, and the heaving of chests one against the other. Without the beading of sweat and slick stripping away any friction between broken people. As if he scarcely remembers what this feeling means. This fullness. This hunger. This burn.

As if in the slide of their bodies he could voice a reality which is becoming increasingly difficult to face. As if in dipping his fingers to Essek’s chest and pinching and twisting, he could pull forth an explanation for everything that went so horribly wrong. Even though Caleb knows.  
  
Caleb _Knows_.

Because it is not just them. There is an eye burned into Caleb’s shoulder and one into his back that speak of his own hubris. That watch them as they tiptoe around this dangerous thing that binds them in threads of silver and red.

“Caleb,” Essek says, cutting through his thoughts with a dull knife. “I know.” His heels dig into Caleb’s ass and push, and urge, and there is another stab of Essek’s pain through his hips as he rearranges himself, overwhelmed by a blinding light when he finds the right angle.

“There,” Essek whimpers, as if Caleb can’t feel. Can’t feel Essek's body spasm below him, his muscles drawn tight. Can’t feel _light_ . And _free._ And a deep, horrifying, intimate _bond_.

As if Caleb can’t feel the fear, and the loneliness. As if with each snap of his hips there isn’t a sense of vindication.

No, not vindication.

_Validation._

As if Essek murmuring his name under his breath like a prayer doesn’t flay him open and leave him exposed and raw. _Caleb, Caleb, Caleb._ And at the same time _Mine, Mine, Mine._ As if claiming Essek’s mouth to silence his benediction doesn’t swallow him whole and breathe new life into his lungs.

As if the rake of Essek’s nails along his back, clinging, clutching, claiming, isn’t as profound a brand as the unsleeping eyes stolen into his skin.

“Caleb,” Essek says, and his voice is as broken as his heart, and Caleb doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Essek,” he says instead. Because that is their reality. Here, in this place, they are stripped of their trappings and their tools, their daggers and their dances. Here they are Caleb. Here they are Essek. Here they are broken together.

He has never felt less alone than now, lost to the sensation of his pleasure, and Essek’s pleasure, and the constant pain he never knew Essek shouldered, and the chanting of their names in time with the impact of their bodies as a promise. Not of forgiveness, but of _possibility._

He shudders, and he bites, tugging gently on Essek’s ear, and Essek _moans_ , a sound that would have shot straight to his groin even if he didn’t feel the blissed out clench of Essek’s body around him and in him and between them and he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. So he bites again, chasing that feeling, because he never wants to be alone again.

“Caleb,” Essek says, Essek _prays_ . “Touch me. _Please_.” His nails dig into Caleb’s back, into Caleb’s ribs, and who is he to deny him.

He wraps his fingers around Essek, flinching when he is once more blindsided by white searing into his vision. Essek’s spine arches underneath him and without thinking, Caleb holds him there with his free hand at the small of his back while he drags and pulls, thumbing at the precome beading at the head of Essek’s cock while Essek whimpers and squirms underneath him. While each snap of his hips is another blinding flash beneath his eyes as Essek’s breath is punched from his chest, from both of their chests, leaving Caleb light headed.

“ _Come for me_ ,” he says in Zemnian, too embarrassed to speak in Common. _“Please, Essek_.”

“Caleb,” Essek says again, more sigh than speech, and his eyes scrunch closed and his nose wrinkles, baring his teeth in a sweet, desperate expression that leaves Caleb feeling so terribly fond. “Caleb, please.”

" _You are so beautiful, Essek. Come. Come for me._ " He says, whispering his incomprehensible demands into Essek’s delicate ear. It flinches away under his lips, pressed tight against the side of Essek’s head, and he chases after it with his teeth.

Essek cries out, mind blank and body drawn tight as a bow, painting his stomach in streaks of white, a stark contrast against his skin.

Caleb stutters to a halt when the overwhelming sensation of Essek’s orgasm shifts into something more restless and uncomfortable, and Essek squirms underneath him, pushing Caleb’s hand away from his cock. 

“Keep going,” Essek says, squeezes him with trembling legs when movement is bearable once more, “Keep going. I want to feel you come inside me.”

With a whine, Caleb repositions himself, sticky fingers digging into the soft flesh of Essek’s thigh, smearing his come over his skin. 

He chases his orgasm with fitful desperation, unpracticed and unprepared for the enormity of the position he finds himself in. Consumed by need and want and pain and fear and flame and shadow and-, his forehead pressed against Essek’s as they breathe the same air in the humid space between them.

Essek does not say what he feels, but Caleb hears it anyway. Hears it in the way his heart quickens and his stomach swoops. In the way his body goes slack and pliant under Caleb’s weight. In the way he looks at him with gentled eyes full of- Full of-

Caleb hisses with a final snap of his hips, settling hot and flush with Essek as his head is filled with blissful static, and Essek cries out below him as he shares in his pleasure, pinning their bodies together with his heels and his fingers dug into Caleb’s skin.

He does not move.

He does not _want_ to move.

Essek clumsily noses at his cheek, offering himself up for lazy, messy, open mouthed kisses that steal time and Caleb’s breath both. But he would give it freely, would gladly give Essek the air from his lungs if only to keep him from drowning for one more moment.

He keeps waiting for regret to set in, for grief to worm its way back into his heart. But it does not. He is swaddled in an impenetrable blanket of contentment and Essek’s quietude, still radiating from him as if he were aglow with the light of it.

Caleb is a selfish creature, and resigns himself to basking in this serenity until the very end of Essek’s spell, trading kisses and sighs and sticky touches that are a language in their own right. Not of forgiveness, but of _possibility_.

“How much time do we have left?” Essek murmurs against the corner of his kiss-swollen mouth. He asks this even as the timer counts down in Caleb’s mind, marking an hour and the end of their shared reality.

“Oh,” Essek says, and there is a hollow sadness in his voice as the thread binding their hearts is severed, and their souls no longer entangle in the weave of time and space. 

The color seems to seep from Essek’s heat flushed cheeks, and his gaze wanders, looking somewhere to Caleb’s left. Somewhere safe. As if now that the magic binding them together has been dispelled, their bond is dispelled with it. It’s an out, Caleb realizes. Permission to leave this alone, pretend it's just the spell. Pretend it's just goodbye.   
  
It takes Caleb a moment to gather his courage, and his resolve. To gather the will to gently ease Essek’s face, storm-dark and lonely, back to his and to whisper, “We have all the time in the world.”


End file.
